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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25192108">Impossible Things</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentNoelle/pseuds/ArgentNoelle'>ArgentNoelle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Awesome Martha Jones, Conversations, Episode AU: s03e08-09 Human Nature/Family of Blood, Episode: s03e08-09 Human Nature/Family of Blood, F/M, Gen, Journal of Impossible Things (Doctor Who), References to War, Tenth Doctor Angst, artist, fix-it that doesn't actually fix anything?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:47:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,700</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25192108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentNoelle/pseuds/ArgentNoelle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He still didn't know how Martha had convinced Joan to come with them on the TARDIS.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tenth Doctor &amp; Martha Jones, Tenth Doctor | John Smith/Joan Redfern</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Impossible Things</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Is it like this<br/>In death's other kingdom<br/>Waking alone</em>
</p><p>
  <em>?</em>
</p><p>He still didn't know how Martha had convinced Joan to come with them on the TARDIS. He'd never asked; felt vaguely guilty, somehow, that he hadn't been able to do it himself. It made him wonder what she had said—<em>he can't do it without you? He fell in love, and that's the only thing holding him to sanity?</em> It took a better human than him (and, there, he said it) to choose to travel with someone who'd treated you so wrongly.</p><p>To be fair, Joan hadn't said anything racist to Martha or anyone else since she got on board the TARDIS, once she knew how much she'd been mistaken in her worldview—a commitment to change. Well. She hadn't said much of <em>anything</em>, actually. Not about her hopes, dreams, fears, beliefs—nothing that had drawn him to her in the first place. He was having trouble remembering what <em>had</em> drawn him to her in the first place, and that was a problem, wasn't it.</p><p>The three of them ran in the TARDIS doors, missile-launched spears zig-zagging their way behind them, and he slammed the doors shut. A hollow, ringing series of thuds in succession shook the wood, but the weapons couldn't get in. In another moment he'd dematerialized, and the familiar wail of the TARDIS taking off echoed through his mind; steadying. Everything else became empty, a complete absence, void and silence beyond the humming ship, the low song. Only then could he stop a moment, turn and grin at them—Martha running up to embrace him, laughing giddily, and, oh yes, the high of missing death yet again through sheer luck!</p><p>Then he noticed Joan, standing on the other side of the console, holding on against the rocky takeoff (this form didn't have the finesse, or the patience, for a smooth takeoff, or maybe this was just so much more <em>fun</em>). Wearing the clothes she'd picked out from the wardrobe room, something that would appeal to her twentieth-century mind while still allowing her the mobility to run for her life; a cycling suit with a skirt shorter than her usual by several inches. There was a streak of ash across her forehead, and she was staring at him with a blank expression that itched like Venusian fire-ants.</p><p>Without a word she turned and left the console room, and he was jogging after her without thinking. "Joan? Joan, are you okay?"</p><p>There was a small sitting-room he vaguely remembered, and when he finally caught up to her she was perched on the chair beside the fire, face turned away. He walked forward, suddenly uncertain. His trainers sank into the thick carpeting, but she still seemed to hear him, turned and smiled wanly in his direction. And he sank to his knees there beside her, not because he planned to but because his legs gave out on him and it was the only half-way graceful save left. He breathed in, raggedly, and out, and wondered if Jackie Tyler was right after all; he just took people and used them up and left them or maybe destroyed them. It wasn't like that before. He didn't know what was wrong. Surely humanity hadn't changed that much, no matter what time period they were from. The long-distant beginnings of the species to the very end of the universe, he knew and loved them all, they never lost that essence, that spark of curious wonder, that steadfast solidity, that bravery in the face of the unknown, even in the midst of terror.</p><p>Perhaps, instead, it was him. He'd lost something—something fundamental. And like a plasmavore he just kept using and using as though it could fix the emptiness…</p><p>"Joan?" his voice came out thready and weak. He could barely breathe, himself, through the terror that descended. He hated her, somehow, for the terror.</p><p>"Doctor," she said. There was too much space between them with that word, the distance between galaxies. He wanted to tell her to call him <em>John</em>, but that would be a lie, and it wouldn't have been any better if she had. "Sorry, I'm just a bit shaken up I suppose," she said. "I'll be right soon enough."</p><p>"Will you?" he asked.</p><p>She reached out; touched his shoulder; and like the crashing of waves in sleep he felt Rose's hand, building him into the hero she believed him to be, and Joan's, when he was small and petty and full of human fear and human weakness. It was neither of those things now. It was only a hand, fragile and hurting, and she pulled away before he could even decide if he could bear to touch her back.</p><p>She got up, walking to the side of the room and pulling something from a drawer, coming back with a battered journal of impossible things, written by a fool. She flipped through the pages, and he saw the messy, artistic cursive with images rendered in ink and washes of water. His own faces, and those he had seen, loved, fought with—and her. She paused on that page, sinking into the chair once more, and then closing the book, closing her eyes.</p><p>"I could draw you again," he said, sounding loud and ridiculous to his own ears. Still running after a train that had already passed, coughing at the steam in its wake. "If you wanted."</p><p>She opened her eyes, looked at him with bemusement. "You'd want to? Still?"</p><p>"Of course I would!" he said, galvanized by inspiration, alarmed she wouldn't think he could, he took her hand, lead her through the maze of passages to an art room and blank paper that folded out like a map. "Just sit there, won't take a minute—" he started with pencil, but put it aside after a few hastily-sketched lines, looked over the array of materials and found his gaze drawn once again to a simple fountain pen and a brush and a cup of water. Then he drew: her face, of course, it was a portrait: the echoes of pasts and futures dancing around her, the way she stood and her smile and that uncertain thing about her eyes that so haunted him; hands holding books and the matter-regenerator she'd held so steadily, saving the lost prince's life while Martha barricaded the doors; the precise DNA strands that made her <em>her</em>, a cross-section of her hair, the single heart beating.</p><p>"Doctor," Joan had been speaking for some time, he realized, but he only now heard it, trying to fit more into the edges of the paper even as he crawled across it getting ink onto his blue suit. "Doctor, I think that's enough."</p><p>"But I haven't finished yet," he said, shaking the pen. A few viscous drops obscured the pattern of her breathing.</p><p>He looked up, and saw her standing—just standing—and that was enough; and capped the pen, and scooched aside, feeling bashful and uncertain and still queasy. And she stood above the picture and looked at it for a long time.</p><p>"I see," she said at last.</p><p>"You do?" He asked. That was good, right? Because <em>he</em> wasn't even sure he saw. Whatever it was he was supposed to be seeing. It was a nice portrait perhaps, but it wasn't anything like her, in any way that mattered, and he still hadn't managed to encapsulate everything that could possibly be her—keep her—fix her—make sense of her?</p><p>"I think, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to go home on our next landing."</p><p>"But… wait, Joan, whatever I did wrong, I can fix it," he said, trying to make her understand but—no. It was already decided. He fell silent before he could embarrass either of them any further. He ran an ink-stained hand through his hair once, twice, then again, and tugged at it.</p><p>Then he grinned. "All right," he said. "I can get you back with not a moment to spare!"</p><p>"Thank you," Joan said. She turned to leave, and hesitated at the door. "I'm sorry, too."</p><p>"For what?" he asked, but the question only echoed. She was already gone. He sat on the edge of the art table he hadn't bothered to use and kicked out his feet, trying to figure out what had happened. Well. They'd broken up, that's what had happened. He'd had it occur often enough to recognize it, it happened with friends all the time. Joan was done. She'd gotten tired of this life, tired of him, tired of his one-hearted promises and the way he was trying too hard to love her, and failing to love her in any way but the one he knew how. But why was <em>she</em> sorry?</p><p>"Doctor? You okay?"</p><p>It was Martha. Entering with a curious look; she turned the key on the orb-light on the table and the sudden brightness made crisp, precise shadows of their arms and legs.</p><p>"Course I am, why wouldn't I be?" he asked, mumbling into his sleeve. He was sitting on the table, cross-legged, bent over double and still pulling at his hair. Not exactly <em>okay</em> behaviour, he knew it, but he was too tired to put on a better show.</p><p>"Joan said she's planning to leave?"</p><p>"Yeah," the Doctor said.</p><p>"You want to talk about it?"</p><p>He didn't grace that with an answer. She should know by now that he never wanted to <em>talk about it</em>.</p><p>"This is the picture you drew," Martha said after a minute. He heard her kneeling down, looking at the sketches. "It's beautiful."</p><p>He laughed bitterly. "She didn't think so. She wanted the love-struck image John Smith created for her. It's the same thing, though! —I put everything into it. Everything I could."</p><p>"I know," Martha said. She climbed onto the table beside him, pressed up against him with that human heat like a banked fire, like the glowing embers of a sun. "But <em>everything</em> for the Doctor is a bit more than <em>everything</em> for John Smith."</p><p>"I can't help that," he said.</p><p>"You shouldn't have to," Martha said. "But you saw more of her. Clearly, and… in a way that scares people."</p><p>"I thought people <em>liked</em> to be seen." He uncurled enough to look out at her from beneath the crag of his arm.</p><p>"Yeah," Martha said. "And it terrifies them."</p><p>He scoffed.</p><p>"Don't tell me you don't understand, Doctor, or I'll laugh in your face," Martha said. "You're as afraid of it was anyone else, it's why you always run whenever I try to talk to you."</p><p>"I don't <em>always</em>," he said, and then fell silent. A guilty expression worried its way across his face. "I do, don't I."</p><p>"You do," Martha agreed. "…And, you're not going to say anything else, are you."</p><p>He shook his head.</p><p>Martha sighed. They looked down at the picture beneath them.</p><p>"Want to draw me?" Martha asked.</p><p>He looked at her incredulously.</p><p>"I <em>know</em>," Martha said. "It's not the right time, or it's inappropriate, well, it always is, isn't it? Yes or no question, Doctor. I won't mind."</p><p>He thought about it, for a minute. Then hopped down, took out another piece of paper, and his rainbow markers, and watercolors, and a few glitter pens, and got to work.</p><p>A few hours later, and Martha had drifted in and out of the room multiple times, finally bringing tea that they shared. Sparkles drifted from his fingers into his cup, mixing with cream.</p><p>"Thank you," she said.</p><p>He raised an eyebrow in confusion, and she waved at the drawings beneath them.</p><p>"You were right," she said. "That people want to be seen. I guess I worried that—well, never mind," she said, and took a sip of her own tea.</p><p>He found another small scrap sheet beside him, and drew a picture of the two of them, quick and dirty in pencil. On her jacket, he put a question mark. From her mouth, a speech bubble with a question mark inside. He—he was there, beside her. <em>Doctor</em>, he wrote, above their heads, and <em>who</em>, under it.</p><p>"What does that mean?" Martha said, with that sudden light in her eyes, that interest in mystery, pushing her onwards. She set down her cup. "Wait, wait, don't tell me. I'll figure it out. Doctor. Oh, we're both doctors? Yeah?" She looked at him for approval and he nodded encouragingly. She grinned. "Not quite yet I'm not."</p><p>He underlined <em>Doctor</em>. Twice.</p><p>"Okay," Martha said; and her smile turned to something softer. "Okay. We're doctors. But who… who's the doctor?"</p><p>He nodded.</p><p>"Why am I the one with question marks on me?" she said. "It's not because you don't know me, 'cause you do. It's got to be a symbol, then. Wait—who. It's a question. The picture is a question? Am I on the right track?"</p><p>Somehow, the space had lightened, and he felt able to speak again. "Perfect marks, as always, Martha Jones. You remind me of me. The best part of me. Or maybe what I used to be. And you're right, that scares me. And it's less than you deserve, because the more I look at you and see me, the less I see you."</p><p>"I know."</p><p>"You do?"</p><p>Martha laughed shortly, and shook her head, bumping her shoulder into his. "I know. And maybe someday I'll leave because of it."</p><p>"Because I've broken you down," he said. He flicked the pencil from his hand, watched it turn over and over in the air, and land, splitting on the floor, graphite exposed.</p><p>"Because I've had enough," Martha corrected him. "But Doctor, that day's not today."</p><p>"And when it's over?" he said, as she leaned her head on his shoulder, and he brought one arm around. "Will you regret it? Meeting me?"</p><p>"'Course not," Martha said.</p><p>"Oh Martha," he said.</p><p>There was so much else he should have said. There was so much else he <em>wanted</em> to say.</p><p>He hopped up, suddenly unable to keep still a moment longer. "I should get the TARDIS ready. Don't want to keep Joan waiting."</p><hr/><p>They all met in the console room, at the doors. Joan, dressed in her old clothes again, took nothing with her but the journal John Smith had lent her—a journal of impossible things. She nodded to Martha, said, "good luck," and shook her hand.</p><p>"You too," Martha said; and she meant it.</p><p>"Well," Joan said. She turned to look at the Doctor. "Goodbye then, Doctor."</p><p>"Goodbye, Joan." The solemnity couldn't last; Martha could see it, he had so many words trying to get out. "You're sure you don't want me to drop you off anywhere else? Somewhere without a war? It's going to be…"</p><p>"Bad," Joan said. "Indescribable. I won't pretend I know what I'm getting into, but this <em>is</em> my home. And I might not be able to fight Daleks throughout space and time, like you and your companions, but I hope I'll be able to do something against the same kind of evil, in my own place, my own way."</p><p>The Doctor smiled raggedly. "Of course. I don't doubt you will."</p><p>So she left, Joan Redfern, walking out into a clear, sunny day, without any hint of the future, except what was in her mind.</p><p>"What happens to her?" Martha asked. She looked at the Doctor, who looked too bereft, to her eyes, to be hiding anything but a secret.</p><p>"Her? Well. She's a nurse; she goes out into the front lines. Saves lives!" He took a deep breath, and pushed the door shut. "Is killed in the line of duty."</p><p>They walked back toward the console, standing over the buttons and dials and levers holding the power of space and time.</p><p>"I wonder what it all means, in the end," Martha said.</p><p>"Nothing," the Doctor said blankly. She turned to him, a question on the tip of her tongue, but the hollowness of his expression stopped her.</p><p>"You don't believe that," she said at last, very softly. "I know you don't."</p><p>"I don't know what to believe, anymore," he said. And pulled the lever; and the future became the present became the past.</p>
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